There
have been many great and important writers, producers, directors and
filmmakers over the years, decades and now, centuries, so you would
think if you had a commercially and critically successful individual
whose career ran 60 years and counting, you'd know him by name. One
who always had something to say, show or always came up with a hook
or concept that was daring, different and promised to be interesting.
However, since the 1980s, flash and style have overtaken substance,
so unless you have a filmmaker who is distinct and well-known as a
celebrity and whose films you can usually recognize as soon as you
start watching (i.e., an auteur), you get lost in the shuffle.

It
is a problem that has made very important filmmakers like John
Cassavettes, Sidney Lumet, Sydney Pollack, Richard Fleischer, Buzz
Kulik, Peter Yates, John Moxey, Arthur Hiller, Arthur Penn, John
Guillerman, Hal Ashby, John Frankenheimer, John Schlesinger and Peter
Bogdanovich become lost (despite some possibly being auteurs) in a
shuffle in the face of Scorsese, Spielberg, Kubrick, Cronenberg,
Lynch, De Palma, George Romero and Hitchcock, though the directors
first noted have directed hits, big hits, blockbuster and even
classics. So lost in the middle of all those names too often has
been a very strong pier: Larry Cohen.

Here's
a man who created several hit TV shows (The
Invaders
(1967) is a classic, even if it only last ed two seasons and he was
not allowed to stay on, thus its shorter life), a bunch of
interesting telefilms (a few intended as pilots for TV shows), wrote
several hit feature films (Phone
Booth,
Guilty
As Sin,
Maniac
Cop,
Uncle
Sam,
the Able Ferrera Body
Snatchers
remake that needs a director's cut and did not do the business it
deserved) a key TV mini-series (Return
To Salem's Lot
is often considered
closer to Stephen King's books than most feature film adaptations)
and wrote for several hit TV shows (Columbo,
The
Fugitive,
NYPD
Blue,
Rat
Patrol),
all with some of the best work in all those cases and that's without
counting the films he wrote and directed himself. Steve Mitchell's
new documentary King
Cohen
(2017) tries to rectify that situation as well as possible.

Though
it runs a tight 107 minutes (they had to know they had enough
material for a longer film or documentary mini-series), the film is
still very tight with film clips, vintage footage, posters, stills
and new interviews with some very big names in the business (like
Scorsese and J.J. Abrams among the filmmakers here), name acting
talent (Michael Moriarty, Yaphet Kotto, Fred Williamson) and other
behind the scenes talent (like make-up master Rick Baker) that shows
how very popular, loved and respected he is for the bold, innovative,
daring, smart, clever filmmaker he is and though some of the work
above is covered, the feature films he directed are here he excelled
the most and that says something.

Films
singled out here include his indie debut Bone,
the It's
Alive Trilogy
(the most underrated horror trilogy in cinema history, led off by his
one huge hit film), Black
Caesar
(with music by James Brown!) and Hell
Up In Harlem
(both falling somewhere between the Blaxploitation cycle and
something more in a serious look at criminality and society, like his
Private
File Of J. Edgar Hoover
film also discussed here), God
Told Me To
(aka Demon,
his most terrifying horror film ever), Q:
The Winged Serpent
(his giant monster movie that more than holds its own against the
multi-million dollar cycle of them being produced today), The
Stuff
(his send-up of consumerism gone insane) and several other indie
thrillers he helmed in the 1980s and 1990s when the studios got
regressive and wanted to make nothing but mall-safe, happy cineplex
fare.

Of
course, Cohen himself is interviewed and has excellent stories to
tell throughout, including how he always made his films as cheaply as
possible without letting them look bad or cheap, his common sense
approach to things that gave him his rare career as an outsider who
survived and even thrived and shows us how he never sold out.

In
all this, I also want to make sure I want to make sure that you know
Cohen is a man of great humor, a fascinating life, interesting
stories and is very personable. His interview clips more than
demonstrate that throughout, while in his films, Bone was not
meant to be comical (we agree), then any humor to about the late
1970s was incidental or contextual. Obviously, he made films with
satire (you may realize this from the sampling above) and also always
took interesting risks, which is why some films might not get the
respect they deserve. Either way, King Cohen is a must-see
documentary for all serious film lovers, filmmakers and anyone who is
serious about the work of a man who is one of cinema's most ignored
artists.

The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer can show the
age of certain materials used, as we get a very good combination
of private film and video, great clips of his past works and newly
shot HD of all the interviewees, et al.

The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on the Blu-ray is often
mostly talking, or some silence, plus many of the film clips are mono
or simple stereo, as are most TV clips, so only expect so much
sonically. Otherwise, it is fine for this kind of program. Thus, it
is nice that a CD soundtrack was included of the music for this
release in nice, clean and clear
PCM 2.0 16/44.1 Stereo. No surprise either since La La Land is a
soundtrack music label, but a great idea just the same.

Other
extras besides the bonus CD include a paper insert of the tracks on
that CD, while the Blu-ray adds featurettes An
Audience With The King,
More
Stories From The King's Court,
Monsters
On The Table,
and Hello,
World!,
plus an Original Theatrical Trailer.